Hinge points. I love a good hinge point – where things are unfixed, a pivot is around the corner and possibilities are screaming at us to take a second look. We as the collective in what is called these United States of America are in the midst of a massive hinge point; things that once seemed solid as bedrock, now feel more like sand and social issues long denied are becoming undeniable. The eternal question continues: Who will we be? What will we become?
These questions feel especially relevant in this season in the life of Shalem as we stand upon the precipice of finding and hiring our next Executive Director. Who will we be? What will we become?
To my delightful surprise, I realized that it was these questions that brought me to Shalem in the first place. Three years ago, almost exactly to the month, I was experiencing a deeply personal ‘hinge point.’ I was on a self-imposed long-term sabbatical, studying Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ work and attending to generational trauma through the work of intentionally reparenting myself and my then 3 and 5 year olds. With fresh eyes on old wounds, both generational and personal, the questions “Who will I be? What will I become?” took on shape and texture such that they’d never had before.
In walked the wise and wonderful Rev. Fay Acker, former Shalem Board Member and longtime Shalem community member and teacher. She saw my spiritual longing, my vocational questioning and as a wise elder does, proceeded to relieve some of the pressure from my shoulders by sharing the weight so I didn’t have to answer these monumental questions on my own. She reminded me that not that long ago I had expressed a curiosity about spiritual guidance. With just this tiny spark she took my spiritual longing in hand and said “Ok, now here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to call Phillip Stephens, you’re going to enroll in SGP and … .” Three years later I am co-directing Heart Longings with Margaret Benefiel, I’m on Shalem’s Board of Directors and I get to work closely with Shalem as it asks of itself once again the same deeply powerful questions that brought me to this wise, contemplative community in the first place.
Three years ago, Shalem offered me the gift of sanctioned sacred time and space; wise teachers with enough emotional maturity to apologize when wrong and slow to judgement when I was wrong. ; ) But the greatest gift that Shalem offered me was daring me to live from my heart, not just my head. To finally (!) radically accept that I was good; that God was not just outside of me, but inside of me and that the Divine could in fact be trusted. My post residency journal entry reflects my wrestling with these profound, life-changing dares:
“God, I so dearly want to believe in my goodness and live without anticipatory grief or fear. I want to respond to each day and moment with confidence – with trust in myself and trust that the ‘web’ holding this all together will not collapse underneath me. It is a web (!) – we are held together-but even if it breaks [and if I knew then what I know now I would’ve written ‘when it breaks’] – the breaking belongs. God is in the breaking – and the holding – I shall not be afraid.”
God is in the breaking – and the holding. I came to finally be able to surrender and experience this reality through my relationships and time in Shalem community. So now, I offer to the Shalem community the gift that it once offered me… the reminder that there is no outside when it comes to the Holy One. God is as much in the breaking as in the holding. May we take heart in this knowing. And as we do the work that is ahead of us to do, let us do it with bravery, compassion and as ever – love. Amen. Ashé. Let it be so.